


one for the memory (two for the pain)

by Maiden_of_the_Moon



Series: only the lonely survive [3]
Category: Bartimaeus - Jonathan Stroud
Genre: Angst, Feelings, Five Plus One Format, M/M, Pining, Post-Canon, references Bart's Journal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-26 11:29:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22643152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maiden_of_the_Moon/pseuds/Maiden_of_the_Moon
Summary: Or: Five times someone asks about John Mandrake, and one time Bartimaeus talks about Nathaniel.
Relationships: Bartimaeus/Nathaniel (Bartimaeus)
Series: only the lonely survive [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1627813
Comments: 12
Kudos: 39





	one for the memory (two for the pain)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [izzybusiness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/izzybusiness/gifts).

_Disclaimer:_ Nope.

_Author’s Note:_ I was _going_ to write izzybuisness something cute and fluffy set in the “love is” universe in honor of Valentine’s Day, but then she mentioned wanting something “canon.” 

Okiee dokie. 

_Warnings:_ Angst. Pining. Subtle depravity. Crap editing. Title taken from [“The Killing Kind”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOXgKgZTs3I) (one of my favorite Bart/Nat songs). Contains references to [Bart’s Journal](http://www.jonathanstroud.com/bart_journal.html), as well as [this tumblr post](https://singacrossthemoon.tumblr.com/post/190657039235/do-you-ever-sit-and-stare-in-the-distance-wonder) that broke into my house in the middle of the night and murdered me with my own knife-shoes.

\---

one for the memory (two for the pain)

-

_or: five times someone asks about john mandrake,  
and one time bartimaeus talks about nathaniel_

\---

1) His first answer is a stare.

His second, a yawn. 

His third, a sigh so heavy that it requires physical effort to heave.

“Sure,” the spirit finally drawls, “I know of him. What about it?” 

“Well, that depends entirely on what you know.” 

There is nothing idiomatic about the withering looks shot by marids. Bartimaeus of Uruk is not a marid. He is not even an afrit. And yet, his gaze is so dry, so utterly desiccating, that the magician temporarily forgets that he is a mere djinni.

“By the points of this pentacle, you are compelled to reply,” he feels equally compelled to remind. 

A pause. A beat. A slow, slow nod. 

“Fine,” Bartimaeus accedes— coldly, measuredly— as he takes a seat of his own in thin air. Long arms cross, and long legs, too. He does not blink. He does not breathe. “My essence still aches from all that glass and iron, so let’s not beat around the bush, shall we? I know plenty. I know that he was a Minister. That he liked toast. That he had a questionable sense of fashion at age fourteen. I know his shoe size, his inseam. I know that his left eye was not as strong as his right. I know the length of his fingers in centimeters, inches, and cubits. I know the network made by his neural pathways, and the ribbons of his vessels. I know the color of his bones. I know the shape of his lungs, the flex of his intestines, and the precise angle where his ribcage curved inward. I know the constellation of moles that dotted his back, the sinewy patterns made by his ligaments, the number of taste buds that gave texture to his tongue, and exactly how soft the hair on his nape was when it grew in fresh. I know the shadow that had been cast over his heart, know his traumas as if they were my own. I know what he dreamt. I know when he cried. I know his birth name and the precise moment of his death, and I know that I will share none of these things with you, on pain of the Systemic Vise, because it is knowledge that you have done nothing to deserve.”

Bartimaeus’ tirade leaves the magician gawping in his stonework circle. It is a reaction derived less from ire than befuddlement, and he quickly transmutes the shock on his face into something more dignified. 

He then squanders those efforts by scratching at the stump of his leg. 

“But if you say nothing,” he warily contends, “the only accounts we’ll have will be… Well.” The magician winces, twiddling his pen. There are notes before him, but they are sparse, indeed. He tries again, coaxing and gentle, “Don’t you think your master would have wanted to be remembered in a—”

“Perhaps _John Mandrake_ would have wanted to be remembered in a certain way,” the djinni drawls, nostrils flaring beneath eyes that gleam like blue flame, “but not my master.” 

Candlelight wavers. Their expressions do not. The stench of rosemary threatens to suffocate in the dark of this unventilated study. 

“I will say no more,” Bartimaeus intones, considering his own pale nails. The hand that they are attached to. The mockery of its lifeline. “Dismiss me.”

Mister Button does.

-

2) Magicians, on the whole, are a perverse lot. But even perverseness exists on a spectrum.

“You have to do what you’re told,” his mistress’ apprentice sneers, all pimples and greasy hair and toxic teenage masculinity. He stands in the center of the rose quartz pentacle like he owns it— which he does not— as well as everything inside it—which, for the time being, he ostensibly does. 

Somewhere in the house, their mistress sleeps. If she were awake, they both know, it would make no difference. 

“Look,” Bartimaeus says, his lofty tones belied by the way he inches towards the circle’s edges, “while I can appreciate this whole ‘fuck the government’ stance from a theoretical perspective, there are a couple of things about your plan, here, that I feel _someone_ ought to point out. One, that particular sentiment was never meant to be interpreted literally, and two, even if it _was_, I am not actually part of the government. Neither, frankly, is John Mandrake. Not anymore, at least. Hasn’t been for— what? A quarter century or so?”

“Pft. Mandrake being a _Minster_ hasn’t got anything to do with this,” the apprentice scoffs, rolling his eyes. Bartimaeus has heard it said that eyes are the window to a soul. He isn’t sure why a soul— being naught but a metaphysical concept— might require any sort of architectural construction done on its behalf, but humans are morons; he ignores their idiosyncrasies when he can. But he remembers the expression now, because this boy’s dull eyes reflect nothing.

No soul at all. 

Bartimaeus isn’t surprised. 

“Then why him? Wouldn’t you prefer a pretty girl? That’d be a first for you, I bet. Well, I mean. I’m sure _anyone_ would be a first for you, but—”

“Because it’s the _challenge?_ It’s the whole _point_,” the apprentice snaps, a reaction counterbalanced by his trousers unsnapping. “Haven’t you been on social media? It has to be someone famous. Someone dead. Someone that a demon knew and could recreate. So I’m ordering you to be Mandr— no! Stop that! I see you shifting those freckles!”

He speaks a word. Lines of rose quartz burn as magma would, melting the patent leather shoes that Bartimaeus had dressed his puppet in.

As Nathaniel had dressed himself in. 

“A _perfect_ recreation,” the apprentice growls, the hand that isn’t fiddling with his underwear raised to a wicked point. “Else that’ll give me the right to use the Shriveling Fire, won’t it? I’m sure you don’t want that. And I’ll warn you— I’ve seen pictures, demon. I’ll _know_. You can’t trick me.” 

_No?_ If there is one thing that Bartimaeus, Sakhr al-Jinni, N'gorso the Mighty and the Serpent of Silver Plumes does well— besides run away— it is rise to an unintended challenge. 

The djinni simpers. Bows. 

“As my master commands,” he obsequiously purrs, voice cantarella-sweet as he rearranges, resizes, and recolors every single one of his simulated innards. 

It is the smallest of comforts.

It is better than no comfort at all.

-

3) “Are you asleep?”

“Yes.” 

“You shouldn’t sleep here, probably,” the small girl advises, her sobriety both unaffected and deeply amusing. 

“Probably,” the djinni agrees, but keeps his lashes lowered anyway, his chin comfortably tucked. His puppet is that of a twelve-year-old today, wan face thin and short limbs scrawny, even after years of swimming lessons. A good disguise for fooling passersby, Bartimaeus had figured, then settled in to wait for his ordered target. 

This random child is not that target. Still, as she has clearly been deceived, he’ll count it as a win. 

“Go home to sleep,” she orders. 

“Would if I could. Can’t. Where’s your mum?”

“Don’t have one. Where’s yours?” the child throws back, casual. 

“Don’t have one, either.” 

“You ought to wake up,” she says again, with all the import granted to her by absolutely no one, absolutely nothing. How youthful of her. While even the wrinkliest human crone is young from Bartimaeus’ immortal perspective, he presumes this girl to be especially fresh; twelve herself, perhaps. Twelve and common and trying to flirt with the boy she found taking a kip beside the lichen-covered statue in the park. “C’mon, now.” 

Teasingly, the girl kicks out, her hard-capped shoe clipping the recycled metal of the memorial bench. It rings, its cry shrill. His reaction Pavlovian. 

With a fluidity granted by eons of practice, Bartimaeus turns his flinch into a nestling motion, snuggling into his oversized parka. The iron is too diluted, now, he reminds himself; he does not feel its burn, anymore. Which makes it a fairly accurate memorial, truth be told. 

“Can’t,” he tells the child again, simulating lethargy. 

“Why not?” 

“I’m busy dreaming.” 

“’Bout what?” 

Nothing. Because it’s a lie, of course. Well, _obviously_ it’s a lie— the child knows he’s awake— but what she does not realize is that he is a spirit, and spirits do not sleep. They do not dream. They are creatures of multiple consciousnesses and infinite recall, and in so being are too possessed by and of reality to fully understand the concept, much less experience the phenomenon themselves. Why bother with delusions? What would the point even be? On Earth, they can shape themselves into whatever is fancied; in the Other Place, they’ve a fathomless pool of lives to share, explore, and reexperience. 

Alone, Bartimaeus has never dreamt. But once, Nathaniel dreamed. Once, Bartimaeus was Nathaniel. And once, in an instant of vertigo and viscera, Bartimaeus’ awareness had tumbled back into the darkness of his master’s mind, much the same way that Nathaniel’s had fallen through the rabbit hole of his own. 

For Bartimaeus, it had been a far shorter fall. A human’s cognizance is not structured like a djinni’s; it is not like time, not a bleak and bottomless pit. No, Nathaniel’s subconscious had sprawled _out_ instead of _down_, into an evanescent labyrinth of tunnels and turrets and ephemeral towers. A phantasmagoric palace lit by window-eyes of reconstituted blue glass. 

They glittered, those eyes. More so, Bartimaeus realized, for having been so frequently shattered. To think them beautiful was a cruel assessment, and yet, the djinni feels he has the right to judge; upon their conjoining, every upset, every doubt, every worry and fear and anxiety and terror that had ever stained Nathaniel’s soul suffused into his essence, like silver into gold— and as electrum filled their shared veins in the form of nightmares, daydreams, and memories, cobalt shards cut into the spirit’s heart with the pain of a million broken crystals.

It was a mercurial sensation. It was a pollutant. And it spread, it spread, it _spreads_. 

“Hey. Hey, answer me. What’re you dreaming ‘bout?”

Bartimaeus flexes his puppet’s fingers, feeling glass grind between each joint. Feeling horrors that are not his own. Feeling an emptiness that might be. 

“Him,” he answers, pointing. 

Bartimaeus need not look to know the girl’s reaction. Her hair rustles when she turns towards the ancient, looming statue; he hears when the skin of her nose scrunches in dissatisfaction. Her near-silent snicker may as well have been a boisterous laugh. 

“Ew,” she cringes, sympathetic. “_That_ guy? You _definitely_ shouldn’t sleep here.” 

The djinni smirks. Baby teeth shine in the sweep of it. 

“I definitely shouldn’t.”

-

4) Déjà vu piques his essence with a familiar physicality: fish-hooks pulling him back into another time, rather than another Place. Oh, he _does_ wish this were another place. Any other place. But no, curse it all, here he is again in London. Why is it _always_ London?

A flash of gold catches in Bartimaeus’ eye, burning like an ember, and he blames his sour mood on thoughts of old bones. 

He does not allow himself to specify whose bones. 

“Oi, Fritang!” the djinni shouts, with far more malice than he would normally show a fellow slave, “What’s with the shriveled yellow balloon you’ve got glued to your chest? Or is that a two-year-old lemon you’ve duct-taped to yourself? I can’t tell from here!”

Bartimaeus watches the insult land as he might a skipping stone, its echoes rippling visibly up the other spirit’s spine. Shoulders tense; a jaw clenches; irritation prickles through every hair of an old-fashioned military cut. When Fritang whirls around— his stolen jewelry reflecting light with the brilliance of the moon— he is already snarling, “That is my _crest_, you ignorant cretin, and it is a thing of _splend_—Bartimaeus?”

John Mandrake, aged seventeen, skids to a confused halt. 

Nathaniel, aged seventeen, scowls at his bespoke doppelgänger. Then, in an effort to make things a trifle less confusing, he adds an oversized, vibrantly red handkerchief to the breast pocket of his suit. 

“You’ve always been more prissy than intelligent,” Bartimaeus drawls, dissecting Fritang’s guise with a single, cutting glance. The other is svelte enough, perhaps, and even-toned. Sufficiently lanky. As he lacks Nathaniel’s true name, Fritang’s puppet is far from perfect; nevertheless, it is a passable likeness— especially in the summer twilight. Good enough to gain the notice of the public, anyway. And thus, the notice of the government. 

Or maybe it was the other way around. 

Whatever. 

Picking a nonexistent fleck of lint from his sleeve, the unimpressed Bartimaeus continues, “Did you learn nothing while acting as a spy for our old master? It’s all about subtlety. Blending in. Shielding the withered remains of that jaundiced growth on your torso from polite company. You can’t don the mask of a political martyr and then expect the _régime de jour_ to turn a blind eye to your robbing spree.” 

“‘Political martyr?’” Fritang blinks. His lashes are overly long, and his eyes two shades from blue enough. For reasons that Bartimaeus chooses not to acknowledge, this makes him want to preen as much as it does scream. “Oh my. That does explain— oh yes, oh dear. I _was_ wondering about that statue. But then, I assumed it was just one of those strange little human traditions. You know the ones I mean. After all, _you_ met Mandrake. What good could _he_ have ever done?” 

Bartimaeus’ own eyes— impeccable replications of Nathaniel’s, down to the number of radial furrows and the topography of each iris’ collarette— contain no trace of the grin that slices his mouth. Which is impressive, frankly, given that its corners are threatening to piece his lower lids. 

“I don’t suppose,” he hums, painfully conversational, “that your master left a loophole in their summons? Say, one large enough to allow you to leave and return those goods to their owners?” 

A snort. The hand that dismisses the notion glimmers with filched rings. “Of course not. Would I be here if he had?” 

“Fantastic.” Bartimaeus’ enthusiasm is sincere, even if his smile isn’t. Fritang falters, bemusements compounding. 

“What? Why so?”

“Because,” the first djinni happily decrees, “you have _no idea_ how long I’ve wanted to do this.”

Then Nathaniel punches John Mandrake in the face.

-

5) The tow-haired boy is quiet. He is not silent.

“Do you… like pretending to be a hero?”

Roses fall, one-two-tree, their heads punctuating the stillness like an affronted ellipsis. 

“Excuse _you,_” Bartimaeus gasps, underscoring his outrage with another sharp _snip_ of his hedge clippers, “I hardly need to _pretend._” 

At this, the lad winces into himself, genuinely embarrassed. Or maybe “sheepish” is the better word, given the way he blanches. And that hair of his. “N-no,” he backtracks, doing a fairly good impression of his mistress’ stutter in his nervousness, “I’m sure, that’s— that’s not what I meant.”

Another flower implodes, its petals puddling upon the lawn. Bartimaeus does not think of blood. 

“I just… I couldn’t help noticing your guise,” the boy mumbles, apologetic. His own clippers tremble in his fists, the opened blades reflecting a meshwork of scars. “And I thought… if _I_ could change my face, it’d be nice to… it’d be nice to pretend. To be a hero. That’s all.” 

The djinni purses his lips. Nathaniel’s lips. “John Mandrake is only a hero because he _died_,” he reasons— reminds— leaning against a singed statue of an angel. “Can’t say that’s a career path I’d recommend following, kid.” 

“But didn’t he die while saving the world?” the apprentice presses, suddenly and vehemently passionate. This is the most animation that Bartimaeus has seen from him over the course of their acquaintanceship, and it catches him a bit off-guard. “That’s what my tutors tell me. And… well, even if Mister Mandrake hadn’t died _there_, in the Glass Palace, he would have died _soon_, right? With the rest of London. With the rest of _Europe_. So— I think, anyway— that if you’re going to die one way or another… Isn’t it better to die a death that _means_ something?”

A branch the size of a tree bough is rent from the rosebush with a ligneous _snap_. There is something similarly detached about Bartimaeus’ expression as he regards the aftermath of his work, his palm pierced through by thorns and wooden shrapnel. His features have plasticized until brittle. 

“Death _always_ means something,” he rejoins, excruciatingly amiable. “It means ‘the end.’” 

His companion nods. Muses. Remains, by all accounts, oblivious to the spirit’s poorly-masked annoyance, focused as he is on his own section of the garden. The world around them smells of sweet rot and ashes; the grasses kowtow, humbled by a breeze. Then, softly: 

“A story may be over,” the little boy decides, “but it doesn’t end until we forget what it taught us.” 

Bartimaeus says nothing.

He’s always hated morals.

-

-

-

1) At best, time heals _some_ wounds. Not all.

Never “all.”

Given time, many wounds begin to fester, rather than repair. Or they continue bleeding. Or they fall away entirely— like an amputated limb— and in the wake of this loss, the wounded finds themselves unable to do much but mosey on, and adapt, and maybe even forget, barring the occasional phantom itch. 

That is not the case, here. 

Time has healed nothing, of course, but— perhaps surprisingly— neither has anything festered. Or continued bleeding. Or fallen away. After all, what is time to him? To them? To any child of the Other Place? 

What time cannot heal, apathy salves. Which is very much to Bartimaeus’ benefit, given their power dynamic. 

“I’m… sorry.” 

It is difficult to tell when the marid glances down. His body is a gossamer weave of such delicacy that the most diaphanous starlight can penetrate it unimpeded. In that sense, he is a shadow no longer; he is marked more by presence than absence. And what a presence he has: Ammet’s silhouette is that of a collapsar cut into space’s pitch-black void. He exudes an undeniable gravity, though he can hardly be seen. 

Bartimaeus allows himself to be pulled closer. To take a seat beside him on the building’s ledge. 

“Not for the drubbing. Or for the confinement thing,” the djinni clarifies, fiddling absently with his guise’s ring finger. “As you may recall, I’ve been there myself, so. That’s clearly not one of those ‘wouldn’t wish it on my greatest enemy’ acts of vengeance. I’m perfectly fine having wrought that on you. Karma, etcetera.”

To be side-eyed by something that lacks sides is vaguely amusing. At least, it is when both the side-eyer and the side-eyed are on the same… well, side. It’s a small world. The list of active spirits is smaller. And magician’s brains are the smallest of all. 

The Nathaniel puppet inspects his nails, thumbing the clear gloss of a manicure. There is tension in his shoulders. Determination in his poise. 

“I’m sorry that…” Bartimaeus starts again— but then, just as abruptly, his resolve dies. His voice dies. Everything _dies_, and isn’t that the fucking rub? His scowl adds the depths of untold millennia to the worry lines that mar Nathaniel’s brow. A beat, a breath; a beam. 

With characteristic duplicity, the djinni resurrects a cheery facsimile of his original thought: 

“There was this master I had. A real brute— you’d have liked him. Worked me down to a teaspoon of essence, he did. Even made me share his icky human body! Stuffed me in with all those goopy bits and fleshy sacks and wax and feelings of existential teenage anguish. Can you imagine? _Eugh_. I fear the pox just _remembering_ it. 

“And then— _and then!_— after laboriously squeezing my awe-inspiring greatness and raw intellect into the impossibly small space between his ears, the bastard didn’t even _listen_ to me! Oh no, he was far too stubborn for that. It was all, _You’re going, Bartimaeus,_ and _I knew you’d say that, that’s why I hid it from you_ and _I won’t condemn you to this,_ and— _if_ you can _believe_ it!— _warm and fuzzy hormones_ that wouldn’t stop _percolating_ in that stupid skull of his. Like he was trying to _soothe_ me. Talk about adding insult to injury. 

“But the real kicker— the real cherry on top— was that no matter how persuasively I argued, or how indignant I got, or how angrily I ordered him _not_ to do it _please don’t do it, I can’t let you do this alone I can’t let this happen again I won’t be able to_ live _with myself please please_ please _just let me die here, let me die with you_— that callous swine went and dismissed me anyway! 

“_I know_, you _should_ be looking at me in disbelief! The absolute _cheek_, am I right? Typical magician trash! _Well_. Let me tell you, I was so insulted, so _furious_, so— so wholly… I was fighting _so hard_, you see, that I’m not sure the moron realized—… that is, I’m not… not completely convinced he was aware that I…

“…I don’t think he knew that I loved him.” 

Sometimes, in his quieter moments, Bartimaeus wonders what spirits like himself lost in exchange for so much _time_. He has his suspicions. Granted, if he really wanted to, he _could_ make his puppet cry; tears are as easy to manifest as skirts or pygmy hippos. But for a djinni, for a marid, such a reaction would be performative. Shallow.

As with all delusions, why bother? Why pretend? 

The ocean cannot be contained in a bottle. 

“So,” Bartimaeus concludes, emulating the stiff upper lip of the British politician he once was, but no longer is, “if, by chance, I should have done anything that might have— you know— made Khaba think that… that maybe you didn’t care about him, then… for _that_… I’m sorry.” 

“…” Ammet has long-since returned to considering the constellations, lace-thin fingers knotted beneath the impression of a chin. Like everything else, most have changed, but some things are indestructible. 

With Kochab and Mizar reflected in his eyes, the marid whispers:

“As you said. ‘Karma, etcetera.’” 

Bartimaeus, mirthless, hears himself laugh, and feels like he got what he deserved.

\---


End file.
